Why Does Russia Need a Base on the Chukotka Peninsula?

A Russian military base will appear on the Chukotka Peninsula, several dozen kilometers from the US border. It’s rumored that Alaskans cheered after this news and are thinking about a referendum.

The news was revived a couple of days ago, although Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu mentioned the plan in late August. Apparently, the latest events in Syria and the aggravation of relations with the US make that information more meaningful.

By the end of 2018, a unified coastal defense system will be created from the southern Primorsky coast to the Arctic. One division will be deployed to the Chukotka operation, patrolling the closed sea of the Kuril Islands and the Bering Strait, and the deployment routes of the Pacific fleet in the Far East and Northern maritime zones. Besides, the division will also increase the combat stability of the strategic nuclear force .

From April to June of this year, the Pacific fleet made an expeditionary cruise to the Matua and Paramushir islands of the Kuril chain, exploring the possibility of deploying troops there. The Eastern Command proposed to rapidly deploy military units there. Apparently, our generals are in a hurry.

I guess yesterday’s hint by the Deputy Minister of Defense Nikolai Pankov that they plan to either restore old bases or build new ones in Cuba and Vietnam, also made Americans nervous. Apparently, the Defense Ministry is reconsidering the decision to liquidate bases in these countries.

We had a naval base on Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, and I wrote in detail about an intelligence center in Lourdes in Cuba last year, Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0. It’s possible that Russia has already agreed with the Vietnamese and Cubans, as tension in the world increases day by day.

My statement at the beginning of the post is a joke, of course. But so far no one is aware of the Commander-in-Chief’s plans. Maybe he isn’t either. So we are digging in at our borders and beyond.